The Night Mare
by mnemosyne23
Summary: The Trio have begun their sixth year at Hogwarts, and something is wrong with Hermione. Where does she go every night, and what does she do when she goes there? Can Ron save her in time? Chapters 1 and 2 added 9-28. RonHermione.
1. Chapter 1: The Trouble With Hermione

**TITLE:** The Night Mare  
_Chapter 1: The Trouble With Hermione_  
**AUTHOR:** Mnemosyne 

**Disclaimer:** All _Harry Potter_-related people, places and situations are the property of J.K. Rowling and her publishers, as well as Warner Bros. Studios. I make no claim to anything, except the concept of the Night Mare. That bit's all mine! :-D  
**SUMMARY:** The Trio have begun their sixth year at Hogwarts, and something is wrong with Hermione. Where does she go every night, and what does she do when she goes there? Can Ron save her in time?  
**RATING:** PG-13  
**PAIRING:** R/Hr  
**SPOILERS:** Up to and including "Order of the Phoenix"  
**NOTE:**  
This idea came to me entirely out of the blue this morning, as I was putting my socks on to go to work. The connection? None whatsoever. It just demonstrates how mundane things can stimulate weird creative impulses. LOL! 

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has reviewed my other "Harry Potter" stories. I'm a horrible person - I don't do individual thank you's with each chapter like other authors, mainly because I usually don't have time to do anything but write, format, upload, and run, thanks to my work schedule. I would like to let EVERYONE know that I am deeply honored by how well-received my other stories have been, and that I've read every response you've written me, and have taken each one to heart. You are all truly wonderful, and I can never thank you enough! All I can do is try to make each new story that much better than the last. Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart - you are the reason I keep writing. :-D I hope you'll all enjoy this story!

* * *

**"I've become so numb:  
I can't feel you there.  
I've become so tired,  
So much more aware…" **

**-"Numb" by Linkin Park**

__

_Something about this is seriously flawed. _

It is dinnertime in the Great Hall. The banners of each house hang from the bewitched ceiling, which shows a brilliantly clear sky pinpricked with a billion stars. The plates of each student and professor are loaded down with the best food imaginable: plump duck stuffed with seasoned breadcrumbs and mushrooms, mashed potatoes drenched in butter, perfectly cooked broccoli that even a finicky first year would be foolish to pass up, and of course, a huge glass of iced pumpkin juice. The Gryffindors have just won their first Quidditch match of the season against Hufflepuff, and tomorrow is a Saturday. It is a good day to be a student at Hogwarts. 

It is also dead silent in the Great Hall. 

Silverware rattles against dishes. Glasses thump as they are picked up and set down. The house banners flutter in an imperceptible breeze. Shoes shuffle, elbows knock, and school robes rustle. 

No one speaks. Unless you listen very closely, you begin to wonder if anyone is even breathing. 

This is not the Hogwarts of six years ago. This is not the Hogwarts of one_ year ago. This is the Hogwarts of today; the Hogwarts of the Second War. Students cast uneasy glances at their neighbors, wondering. Wasn't Rosie Wileybone's father suspected of being a Death Eater during the First War? Doesn't Nigel Cunningham have an uncle in St. Mungo's, a casualty of You-Know-Who's fury? Does Draco Malfoy have reason to notice me? _

Is Harry Potter the luckiest boy alive, or the most cursed? 

In the end, it always comes back to Harry Potter. By the end of every meal, every Quidditch match, every interminable lesson, all eyes focus with piercing intensity on the Boy Who Lived. Each mind silently ticks the years off on invisible fingers, and amends the title to The Boy Who Lived Six Times_. A few choose to look into the murky future, and anoint him anew: _The Dead Boy_. _

Perhaps this hall of silent children is a mirage. Maybe each mute figure is a hollow shell, controlled from afar by an Imperius_ curse, forced to eat, to sleep, to learn, to function in anxiety-laden quiet. In the Hogwarts of the Second War, it is on everyone's mind; but it isn't the case. These children are children, and their actions are ****_RE_actions. If you watch them, you will see the fear in every eye; the unspoken terror. No _Imperius_ curse would allow such emotion to seep through. They are humans, not animated corpses. _

Besides, only one of them looks like living death; and she, like the rest of them, isn't talking. 

--------------------------------------------- 

The problem of what was bothering Hermione had been on Ron and Harry's minds since Platform 9 ¾, but no amount of coaxing would tempt her to spill her secrets. Eventually they had given up asking her directly, and had tried hinting around the subject during periodic conversations. But Hermione was still Hermione, and she obviously caught on to what they were doing, because by the fourth week of sixth year, she had retreated into a silent shell. During the day, she barely shared three words in conversation with her two best friends. 

Ron was beginning to panic. Harry was still struggling with the aftermath of what had transpired in the Department of Mysteries last year, and there were plenty of times Ron heard the other boy crying softly behind the curtains of his bed late into the night. How could the youngest Weasley son help? Thankfully, he'd never suffered losses as horrific as Harry - parents, a much-loved godfather… - but it also meant he didn't have the foggiest idea how to help his friend recover. He was hamstrung, but the only person who might have been able to help him was even more of a mess than Harry, and Ron didn't have the slightest idea why. 

Hermione had always been the level-headed member of their trio. Whenever there was a question that required clear, analytical thinking, she was there with the answer in a heartbeat. Yet she was also able to dissect the actions of emotional, overwrought individuals; actions that left Ron and Harry flustered and scratching their heads. No spell yet had been created that Hermione couldn't do, and she knew the history of the wizarding world better than Ron himself, despite being Muggle-born. SHE would know how to help Harry; SHE would know what to say, what to do, what to avoid. 

If only she'd TALK to him. 

The level-headed girl Ron had come to admire - and envy - had been replaced with a vacant husk. Her sparkling brown eyes were dull and sunken, underscored with bruised-looking circles that made her face look like a Muggle child's Halloween mask. Her bushy hair was limp and brittle, and her normally rosy skin was waxy and yellow. Her pale lips were thin and chapped, and the pounds were dropping off her already thin frame at an alarming rate. 

It was time to do something, that was certain. What that something was, Ron wasn't sure, but he knew he had to be the one to do it. Harry was too preoccupied with little things like saving the world and not dying in the process; but at least he was eating, and playing Quidditch, and TALKING. Hermione was by far the more serious problem, and she was the one Ron was most afraid to confront. An unspoken tension had existed between him and the bushy-haired prodigy for years, but it was still little more than an intangible taste on the air at this point. Ron didn't know what it was, exactly, but he knew that being alone in a room with Hermione was uncomfortable. The time always seemed… fraught with unrequited possibilities. 

But he had to do it, because Hermione was his friend, and she would have done the same for him. Hell, she'd do MORE. She'd have sat him down the first day of school and FORCED him to tell her what the problem was. And he would have told her, because that was what you did when Hermione turned all her penetrating intensity on you. Ron knew he'd have to copy that steely-eyed focus if he was ever going to get his friend to tell him what was going on. 

Which was how he found himself sitting up in the Common Room at almost midnight on a Friday night, practicing grim faces. It was a lost cause, and he knew it. Hermione would take one look at him and bust out laughing; but at least that would be progress. Perhaps if he got her laughing, he could get her talking as well. 

_A chicken, a mongoose and a mole walk into a bar,_ he mused silently. _"Ouch," said the mongoose. "That hurt."_

"Well, if she doesn't laugh, maybe she'll slap me," he muttered. "If she doesn't, I'll have to do it myself. It's the least I'd deserve." 

He must have drifted off to sleep, because the next thing he knew, his head was snapping up, the clock on the wall read 1am, and the portrait hole was just swishing shut. Since he didn't see anyone, and there were no footsteps hurrying up the stairs, he assumed that someone had just left. 

_Who in the world could be leaving the dormitory at one in the morning?_

Perhaps someone who had been acting out of character all term? 

Shaking off his drowsiness, Ron forced himself up from the Common Room sofa and stumbled to the portrait hole. Pushing it open, he slipped out into the corridor. 

"Wassat?" the Fat Lady sputtered as Ron closed the portrait behind him. "Who'sere?" 

"No one. Just me," he reassured her. "Go back to sleep." Pausing for a moment, he asked, "Did you see anyone else just come through here?" 

"Wassat? Oh." The Fat Lady gave a huge yawn. "A girl. Big hair." 

He'd been right. "Did you see which way she went?" 

"Down the shtairs, o'course. Now shoo, lemme sleep." The Fat Lady waved him off with a torpid hand, then closed her eyes and hunched over again. Within seconds, she was snoring. 

Ron turned away from the portrait and trotted down the stairs, trying to keep his footsteps as quiet as possible to prevent arousing attention. He hadn't bothered to change out of his day clothes before his late night brainstorming session, and his wand was tucked into the pocket of his jeans. He didn't dare take it out and conjure a light to guide his path, in case it brought him unwanted attention. 

Ron's feet brought him to the school's courtyard, which seemed eerily skeletal in the washed out moonlight. The mighty pendulum swinging beneath the clock tower ticked on with an air of morbid finality. The sound of falling water coming from the fountain in the center of the courtyard was oddly terrifying, like a million tiny footsteps of the imps of Hell- 

His imagination was getting carried away. Time to move on. 

Movement on the bridge caught his eye, and he saw a familiar head of bushy hair hurrying down the covered span. Ron almost called out to her, but bit his tongue just in time. Instead, he jogged after her, keeping far enough back that she wouldn't notice his presence. 

Hermione led him to the Whomping Willow. _That was unexpected,_ he thought nervously, and debated calling out to her again. Before he could decide, however, Hermione had pulled a wand out of her sleeve and was pointing it at the tree. 

"_Immobilus_," she said huskily, and the sound of her voice was such a shock to Ron's system, he gaped. It surprised him to realize he'd forgotten the sound of her voice. It shocked him even further to discover that the voice he DID remember was smoother than the hoarse rasp he'd just heard. Perhaps lack of use had had more of an effect on Hermione's voice than he'd anticipated. Or perhaps she gargled with lye before bedtime. 

Shaking himself out of his reverie, he was just in time to see the girl disappearing down the same hole Padfoot had dragged him down three years earlier. "What are you doing, Hermione?" Ron wondered aloud, then carefully crept towards the paralyzed tree and followed her down the tunnel. 

-------------------------------------------- 

When Ron reached the end of the tunnel and set foot inside the Shrieking Shack for the first time in three years, he stopped. Memories washed over him, and he felt an intense pang of regret as he thought of Sirius, and Lupin, and Wormtail, and Harry. Especially Harry. Perhaps if Ron hadn't been so attached to his rat, Harry would never have lost Sirius. None of the events from three years earlier would have happened, and Sirius would have eventually gotten his hands - or jaws - on Pettigrew, and the truth would have come out all on its own. Sirius wouldn't have spent two years in hiding - he would have spent them actively fighting He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Harry would have been able to talk about his godfather with pride, rather than whisper about him in private. And the original Marauder wouldn't have died; that most of all dominated Ron's thoughts. If only Sirius hadn't died, perhaps Ron wouldn't be here alone trying to confront Hermione. Harry would be with him. Perhaps they wouldn't be here at all. Perhaps the war would be over and You-Know-Who defeated and everyone would be living happily ever after. 

But Sirius was dead, and there was no changing the past. All he could do was forge ahead with the future. With that in mind, he began to move, following the trail of Hermione's footprints through the dust on the floor. There were lots of footprints, actually - all of them Hermione's. She must have been coming here for a long time. _How long? Since the start of the year? Since LAST year?_ His worry growing with every step, Ron slowly climbed the stairs, careful to tread lightly on the creaky floorboards. 

Of course he knew which room she would be in; it was the same room they'd all clustered in three years ago. The room where they'd learned of Peter Pettigrew's treachery. Flickering firelight filtered through the door, dancing against the dark paneling of the hallway as Ron crept towards the room. Pressing himself against the wall, he craned his neck to peer around the door jamb. It was all he could do to resist cursing in disbelief. 

The room was clean - virtually sparkling - and looked like a laboratory. Smoking cauldrons stood shoulder to shoulder with glass beakers filled to the brim with potions of every color and viscosity. Something thick and blue bubbled in a pot over a fire that roared in the hearth, releasing invisible smoke up through the chimney; she must have magicked the kindling. All the old furniture had been removed (or perhaps transfigured), to be replaced with a long table that filled one side of the room, and a rumpled bed that dominated the other half. 

Hermione was nowhere to be seen. 

"Cor," Ron breathed, stepping through the door and staring in shock at the paraphernalia that covered every surface. "Hermione, what have you been doing?" 

"Ron!" 

The voice came from behind him, and was followed by a crash of breaking pottery. Ron spun around and found Hermione staring at him with wide eyes from the doorway. The floor around her feet was covered with shards of ceramic and something that looked like wet seaweed, but which he recognized as Sleep Creeper, a strangling weed. A highly illegal strangling weed. 

"What are you doing here?" she finally choked out, her hoarse voice a stark contrast to the disbelief in her eyes. "You shouldn't be here! Go away!" She stooped down and began gathering the slimy vines into what remained of the bowl she'd been carrying them in. "You should never have seen any of this!" 

Ron stared, watching her bony hands scoop up the slippery greenery. "Hermione, what are you DOING here?" he managed to demand, finally recovering his voice. "What is all this!" 

She never looked up at him. "Nothing I can't manage. Thank you and goodnight." 

Suddenly, it dawned on him. He began to back away, towards the fire. "Oh God," he whispered, feeling behind him until he felt the comforting masonry of the fireplace. "You're working for him, aren't you?" He swallowed, but found his mouth was bone dry. "You're working for You-Know-Who…" 

Hermione paused in her clean up, and slowly raised her head. Sunken eyes glared at him from beneath shaggy bangs. "You should never have followed me," she whispered, though it came out as a hiss. "Now you know too much!" 

_To Be Continued…._

_----------------------------------------_

_I've got chapter 2 of this written already, but I'll admit it - I'm lazy. LOL! I won't beg for reviews, because I think that's rather selfish, but reviews would certainly motivate me to get chapter 3 in the bag! So please, if you liked the story so far, I hope you'll let me know! Thank you! :-D _


	2. Chapter 2: Magic Done in the Dark

**TITLE:** The Night Mare  
_Chapter 2: Magic Done in the Dark_  
**AUTHOR:** Mnemosyne 

For Disclaimer and other information, see chapter one.

* * *

_It's getting hard to wake up in the morning;  
My head is spinning constantly --  
How can it be?  
How could I be so blind to this addiction?  
If I don't stop, the next one's gonna be me.  
Only emptiness remains;  
It replaces all… all the pain…  
(Won't you come out and play with me?) _

-Martika, "Toy Soldiers" 

Hermione stood up slowly and advanced toward him, her jaw set in a grim line. "Do you really think I'm a Death Eater?" she croaked. 

Ron stared her down. "Let's put the pieces together, shall we?" he snapped. "You've been sneaking out of the girl's dormitory to brew potions in the middle of the night in a haunted house, using a smokeless fire and illegal plantlife. You don't speak to me any more, and you won't even LOOK at Harry. The only schoolbook I've seen you read with any interest this term is the one for Defense Against the Dark Arts. And to cap it all off, you look like something out of Hagrid's _Monster Book of Monsters_." He raised his chin defiantly. "So yeah, I have my suspicions. Prove me wrong." 

Hermione glared at him. "You really are an idiot, Ronald Weasley," she growled in her acid-soaked voice. "In case you've forgotten, I'm a MUDBLOOD. Do you really think, even if I WANTED to become a Death Eater, that You-Know-Who would allow it? That he wouldn't kill me on the spot, as an example? Do you REALLY think that? Do you even think at all?" 

Ron ignored her more hurtful remarks. She was talking. If he could keep her talking, maybe he could get her to tell him what the hell all this was about. "Then explain this." He gestured to the room at large. "When did you become Snape's little protégé?" 

"Professor Snape has nothing to do with this, and neither do you. Get out." She turned on her heel and marched back to the smashed crockery on the floor. With a muttered word, the bowl fixed itself and lifted off the floor into her arms, bringing its contents with it. 

"Nothing to do with me?" Ron sputtered, incensed, as he watched her carry the creeper to the table and set it down beside a bubbling cauldron of green slime, her back to him. "Nothing to do with me! We're friends, Hermione! Or have you forgotten that since you started playing with your chemistry set? I've been watching you walk around the castle like a zombie for the past month and a half, and now I find out it's because you've been buying up what looks like half of Knockturn Alley's black market contraband and using it to brew God knows what. It could be poison or bloody CANDY floss for all I know, because you won't TALK TO ME! We couldn't shut you up before, but in the course of this argument alone you've said more words to me than you have for the past month combined! Tell me that's normal. Tell me I shouldn't worry! Because I DO worry, Hermione. I'm not stupid. I DO think. And I think that whatever is going on here must be an ugly thing, or else you wouldn't be doing it alone. Since when have we ever done anything alone, the three of us? God, between you and Harry, it's like living with two blocks of stone. Miserable, tormented, bloody FRUSTRATING blocks of stone, and I can't do a damned thing to help because I'm just Ron Weasley, and Ron Weasley apparently wouldn't know his head from a croquet hoop, judging by the way his friends treat him!" 

His tirade ended and he stood there, nostrils flaring, panting for breath. It felt good, in a perverse way, finally expelling his anger and frustration in Hermione's direction. At last, he'd said it to SOMEONE. It was as if a dam had broken somewhere in his gut, and now all the pent up fury that he'd been bottling since last year was loose and felling trees in its wake. It was a liberating feeling. 

Until he saw her shoulders shake, and realized Hermione was crying. 

She hadn't turned around during his entire diatribe, but her head had sunk lower and lower with every sentence, and now her chin was virtually touching her chest. That first hitching sob was followed by another, louder one, then another, and another, until she was sobbing into her arm against the edge of the table. 

"Oh, Ron…!" she wept, still not looking at him. "I… I'm s-sorry…! I kn-know that you've worried s-so much about me. I've s-seen it on your f-faces, you and Har-Harry. I wanted to te- … t-to tell you s-s-so muuuuch…!" Her voice trailed off into a long, miserable wail, and she collapsed to her knees on the floor beside the table, sobbing uncontrollably. 

Ron was paralyzed with shock. He had absolutely no experience with comforting hysterical girls, as Ginny would have gladly told anyone who bothered to ask. He generally left such things to wiser people, and hurried away quickly before he could say anything idiotic that made the situation worse. But there wasn't anyone else about at the moment, and this was HERMIONE, not just some girl in the Gryffindor Common Room. He had to do something. 

Edging forward, he slowly knelt down by her side. "Hermio-"he began, but was cut off as she pulled up out of her slumped-over heap and threw her arms around his neck, drenching the shoulder of his jumper with tears. 

Clearing his throat -- and deciding that now was not the time to think about Hermione's shivering body pressing so close against his own -- Ron carefully wrapped his arms around her waist and rubbed her back, as his mother had always done for him when he was a child and needed comforting. "It's all right, Hermione," he said, thrilled with his tongue for coming up with such an original idea. "Please don't cry. I'm here now. It's going to be all right, I promise." 

Several minutes passed, during which nothing was said between the pair outside of tears and murmured words of reassurance. Eventually, Hermione pulled away from his shoulder and stared into his eyes. Her own eyes were bloodshot, and her face was even whiter than before. "I've wanted to tell you…"she choked out, her eyes searching his face for some kind of approval. 

Ron didn't know how to answer that, so he nodded. "I know," he said carefully, rubbing her back. "I understand." 

"You don't!" she argued, shaking her head. "You don't understand! Oh, Ron…!" 

Afraid she'd explode into more hysterics, Ron quickly broke in. "Tell me now, then," he suggested, reaching up to tuck an errant lock of hair behind her ear. "I'm listening." 

Hermione bit her lip and stared at him for a few seconds, then let out a long breath, deflating her thin body. Ron quickly wrapped his arm around her waist to keep her from falling over, and her head came to rest on his shoulder. "It started over the summer," she murmured with her acid-stained voice, her breath tickling across his chin. "I was worried about Harry." 

"We're all worried about Harry," Ron reminded her softly. 

"I know," she admitted, pressing closer. "But I couldn't stop thinking about his Occlumency, or lack thereof. I knew that when he was at Hogwarts he was safe enough, but what about when he was home with the Dursleys? Would he be safe then? Would You-Know-Who be able to reach him there? If he did, what would happen? Would Harry survive? Would he do terrible things? Would he disappear like Bertha Jorkins? I couldn't sleep; I could barely eat. I was terrified. 

"I started Flooing to Diagon Alley during the day while my parents were at work. I told them it was so I could visit the library there, and I wasn't lying; I just didn't tell them my reasons. I buried myself in the section devoted to Protection Spells, but there was nothing that matched what I needed. There were spells to dispel bad dreams, or to give good ones, but nothing to defend against a determined, evil mind bent on domination. You-Know-Who was weakened during his fight with Professor Dumbledore, but not defeated, and I had no idea how much time was left before he regained the strength to attack Harry's sleeping mind again. I was getting desperate, which was how I ended up in the section on dark magic." 

Ron's muscles stiffened. "Hermione," he breathed in warning. "You didn't-" 

She tilted her chin up to look into his face. "I almost did," she murmured, her eyes dark and distant. Then they cleared, and she shook her head. "But I didn't. I read every book on defense against the dark arts that I could lay my hands on; even the old dusty ones that no one had touched in over a century. 

"That was where I learned about the Night Mare." 

Ron frowned in confusion. "The what?" 

"The Night Mare," Hermione repeated, lowering her face again and cuddling up against his side. "It's rather like a Patronus, but… different. Quite different. It was the power that interested me. I saw the ingredients, and I knew that I was looking at a spell that could do what I needed. It could repel You-Know-Who." 

"What, you mean it could hurt him?" 

"No. I wish, but no." She sighed, and it shook her body like a baby's rattle. "But it can keep his mind at bay, away from Harry." 

"How does it work?" 

With another heavy sigh, Hermione pushed herself away from his side and sat up, pulling her knees up to her chin and curling her arms around her legs. Ron got the impression she was trying to make herself as small as possible. "The Night Mare is a very old spell," she explained wearily, closing her eyes and resting her cheek on her knees. "It was used before the advent of Occlumency, to protect ruling wizard monarchs from the mental assaults of their enemies." 

Ron whistled low. "Wizard monarchs? Sounds upper-crusty." 

"Very. And with good reason. It wasn't the sort of spell ordinary wizards could… particularly afford to do." 

Ron cast an eye over the panoply of bubbling cauldrons and smoking beakers that filled the room. "I can believe that." 

"I don't mean the supplies." 

Ron shot her a look. Her eyes were still closed. "What do you mean then?" he asked. 

"I mean the people, Ron. The kind of monarch that needed a Night Mare for protection wasn't usually a very nice one, and didn't much care about anyone else's welfare. It's the kind of spell that wears heavily on the spellcaster." 

This time, Ron's eyes roamed over Hermione's ravaged body: her skeletal frame, bony wrists, sickly complexion; the stepladder notches of her vertebrae, visible even through her sweater. He thought of her hollow eyes and pale lips, and the razor-sharp edges of her cheekbones. 

He nodded faintly. "I can believe that," he repeated, his voice hovering at a distracted murmur as his eyes traced her too-thin arm from shoulder to elbow and back again. 

Her thumb began absently stroking her knee as she continued. "It's not actually a spell," she explained, struggling to be heard despite the sandpaper rasp of her voice. "It's a potion. When taken in the proper dosage, the Night Mare that is created can protect a person for 24 hours before the potion has to be administered again. It is completely invisible to anyone but the person who drinks the potion, and anybody who is in that person's presence at the time." Here her eyes opened and fixed Ron with a penetrating stare. The familiar chocolate brown of her irises was hidden by shadow, making her eyes little more than a pair of glinting orbs of pure black. If the situation weren't so serious, he would have made a joke about snowmen and carrot noses and eyes of coal, but this was not the time, and frankly, her eyes made his spine tingle with fright. 

"What does it look like?" he heard himself ask before he could stop the question from tumbling out. She didn't look like she wanted to think about it. 

It took a minute before Hermione finally answered. "Like a horse," she said simply, closing her eyes again, as if visualizing behind her eyelids. Ron was glad to have that gaze diverted. "And it's black, but not like the color black. It's black like a hole. Not dark, but empty. As if someone's taken a cookie cutter and cut a piece of the world away, revealing whatever's behind it. You can't look at the edges -- it hurts your eyes. Reality meeting unreality and other mind bending concepts. When it runs, it sounds like hoofbeats in a far away tunnel. Light and dark and color all disappear into it. I think it could swallow the moon, if it was told to; and it has to be told what to do. Otherwise it will just stand there and stare at you with invisible eyes, and drink your mind like a water trough." She shivered visibly, and Ron wondered if perhaps that last example was given from experience. 

"It doesn't sound like a Patronus to me," Ron muttered, trying to ignore the quiver in his voice. "Sounds more like a bloody Dementor." 

"I suppose it could be, if someone ever decided to use it like one," Hermione admitted, nodding weakly against her knees. "But if you use it right, in the manner for which it was designed, it can be a savior. It absorbs thought, Ron. Any kind of thought, but especially sharp, directed thought, which is exactly what Voldemort keeps trying to use against Harry. Haven't you noticed how well he's been sleeping?" 

Of course he had. So had Harry himself. But that wasn't the point. "Hermione, this is a very nice thing you're doing, but you've got to stop," Ron argued. "Harry's learning his Occlumency, and he'll be right as rain before long, thanks to Dumbledore. But I don't know about you. You look like Death's been using you as a doormat." 

"Thank you for the striking simile, Ron." 

"It's true! You want me to lie to you? We're friends, Hermione, and I think we've had enough of the lying for a while. You look like hell. Worse, you look like something a cat coughed up IN Hell. Everyone's noticed, not just Harry and I. We're all… worried about you." He felt himself blushing, but plowed on. "Harry's especially worried, and you know how overprotective he can be. It's only a matter of time before HE decides to follow you on one of your late night escapades, and you'll have to explain everything all over again. You should just stop now, come back to the Tower with me, and get some sleep." 

Hermione shook her head. "I can't, Ron." As if everything he'd just said didn't matter. 

Ron frowned at her. "Why not?" 

"This is too important. Harry's too vulnerable right now for me to just give it up." 

Ron rolled his eyes. "This from the girl who's always trying to get us to spill everything to Dumbledore and the Order? Tell someone! Tell McGonagall, or Dumbledore, or Lupin, or Moody for Pete's sake. One of them should be able to help! They're full-fledged members of the Order, remember? If they find out you've been doing this… Well, all right, they'll be bloody furious at first. But THEN they'll think of something else to do, and you won't have to make this Night Mare thingy anymore." He smiled, proud of his skillful use of logic. 

Hermione opened her eyes and raised her head. The placid look on her face was a striking contrast to what she said next. 

"They know." 

Ron blinked. "Excuse me, what?" he asked, sure he'd heard her incorrectly. 

"They know, Ron." 

"Who know?" He looked over his shoulder at the fireplace, at the long, jumping shadows in the corners of the room, as if expecting cloaked spies to seep out of the woodwork. 

"Dumbledore. McGonagall. Most of the Order." 

Ron stared at her. "They… Wait, they KNOW? About this?" He gestured to the room. "What do you MEAN, they know about this?" 

She sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "How do you think I get all the necessary ingredients, Ron?" she rasped wearily. "Do you think an underage witch can just go to Diagon Alley and buy Sleep Creeper? Do you think I could go window shopping down Knockturn Alley? They've been helping me. Professor Lupin even suggested I use the Shrieking Shack as my laboratory." 

Ron's eyes were burning, but he couldn't seem to blink. "How…how long have they known?" he managed to ask. 

Hermione lowered her hand and stared at her toes, unwilling to meet his eyes. "Tonks found me passed out in my room at the Leaky Cauldron the first night I conjured the Night Mare," she mumbled, then smiled derisively. "I was rather noisy, apparently. The other residents thought I'd been murdered in my bed. Tonks was downstairs and came running up to investigate." 

"The Leaky… What?" 

She waved a hand dismissively. "I told my parents I was going to visit Viktor for the end of the summer, and took a room at the Leaky Cauldron. I wanted to focus on my research." 

It was as if the Hermione Ron had known since First Year had been replaced with a hollow Hermione clone, only this Hermione lied to her parents and screamed bloody murder in bed. "What…happened next?" He was in a daze, unable to connect what he knew of the girl in front of him with the story she was telling him. 

"Tonks took me to Grimmauld Place," Hermione continued, in the same drab monotone, her thumb scrubbing idly at the toe of her shoe. A hint of a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "It was like you said, of course. They were furious at first. I've never seen Professor McGonagall so red in the face, let alone Professor Lupin. The only one who didn't seem very fazed was Moody." Her thumb stopped, and she slid her hand up her leg to cup her knee. 

"He said I'd make a good Auror," she murmured. 

Ron lost it. "So that's it!" he exclaimed, throwing his hand out in a violent gesture of disbelief. "A little bit of praise from a paranoid madman and you're willing to pour your life down the drain on some useless cause!" 

Hermione turned to face him and fixed him with a harsh stare. "Of course not!" she argued back, her hoarse voice grating like sandpaper in his ears. "It wasn't about praise, Ron! It's about sacrifice! That's what makes an Auror different from everyone else -- they're willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of others!" 

"Oh , don't bloody give me that sacrifice malarkey. Someone else could be doing this! It doesn't have to be you!" 

"WHO, RON?" she demanded, getting on her hands and knees and marching toward him across the aging floorboards. "WHO! Do you think Dumbledore could do this? Do you think no one would notice if he started to look like this?" She pushed back her bangs so he could see the skull-like ridges of her face. "Professor McGonagall? Professor Snape? If Lupin could have done it, I'm sure he would have done so, but unfortunately every month he turns into a BLOODY WEREWOLF, so he'd be too weak and preoccupied to worry about protecting Harry!" 

"Tonks! Shacklebolt! Moody! They're Aurors, aren't they? Real ones, not little girls pretending. Why can't they do this?" 

"DON'T call me a little girl, Ronald Weasley. And in case you didn't notice, we're in the middle of a war, not a bloody leaflet campaign. People are fighting -- REALLY fighting. Would you honestly deprive our side of their best warriors when they're most needed?" She tilted her head. "Our side can't afford to lose anyone, Ron. We're stretched too thin as it is." 

Ron felt something in his chest deflate. Whatever righteous anger had been keeping him afloat disappeared, and he wilted. "Stop arguing with me, Hermione," he murmured, looking down at the floor. "Don't blame me for being selfish. I don't want to be deprived of YOU." 

When she didn't say anything he looked up, and saw that she was watching him with soft eyes. Tears were welling against her lashes. "Don't cry-" he said, reaching up to touch her cheek, but she pushed his hand to the side and wrapped her arms around him, burying her face in his neck. 

"They wanted someone else, Ron, but no one else made sense," she whispered, voice trembling. "I'm close to Harry. I'm the best at brewing potions in all of Sixth Year, and even Professor Snape can't argue that. And I'd already done it once." She shivered. "The war isn't going well, Ron. Our side is losing. They would have used someone else, but there's nobody they can spare." 

Ron squeezed his eyes shut and held her, his arms tightening around her narrow waist until he made himself stop, afraid he'd snap her brittle bones. It wasn't a shock, really, to learn the Order was losing the battle against You-Know-Who. After all, if the dark wizard hadn't tried to kill Harry all those years ago only to have his spell backfire, he would have won THEN. It was something nobody wanted to admit, but anyone who looked at the facts knew it to be true. Ron had heard his parents muttering about it late at night in the living room, when they thought everyone else had gone to bed, and didn't realize their youngest son was sitting up at the top of the stairs, desperate for every shred of news he could get. The adult members of the Order were worried; worried that there were no magical baby boys looming on the horizon to rescue them from You-Know-Who's growing power. They didn't know how to fight him fifteen years ago, and they were barely able to keep their heads above water now. 

"If he gets to Harry, everything is lost," Hermione whispered, as if she'd been reading his thoughts. "Harry's the key, just like he's always been. He's more important than any of us, Ron. We have to protect him at all costs." 

"Even if that cost includes you?" he murmured. 

She nodded faintly. "Even if that cost includes me." 

_To Be Continued..._


End file.
